The Virginia opossum, the only marsupial north of Mexico, holds 1,207 records in Tennessee, from Cherokee National Forest and the Smokies west to Land Between the Lakes, with the heaviest county counts in Hamilton, Davidson, Knox, and Shelby.
Built for the night shift
The opossum is a slow, deliberate forager with a prehensile tail, grasping hind feet, and more teeth than any other North American land mammal. It eats nearly anything, insects, carrion, fruit, eggs, small animals, and it shelters by day in hollow logs, brush piles, and the cavities other animals dig. Cornered, it may bare those teeth and drool, or collapse into the famous faint that gave us playing possum. It does well in the same broken, settled country people occupy.
A breeding season that starts in the cold
Opossums begin breeding in late winter, and the first joeys of the year spend weeks in the pouch before riding on the mother’s back. Tennessee’s record crests in April, when those early litters are on the move. Opossums do not hibernate, and their bare ears and thin tails take a beating from frost, one reason the species has always belonged to the milder end of the continent.
Status in Tennessee
NatureServe ranks the Virginia opossum S5, Secure, in Tennessee. The species is native throughout its Tennessee range, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
